FORECASTING CHANGE IN THE LEVEL OF FOREST COVERAGE USING THE GLOBAL FOREST WATCH SERVICE AND THE PROGRAMMING AND DATA ANALYSIS LANGUAGE R

Abstract

The problem of calculating the level of forest cover is considered, including forecasting changes in forest cover in individual forestry. It is stated that the authors previously developed software for calculating forest cover and processing information about forest plantations using the example of the village of Spivakivka in the Izyum district of the Kharkiv region. A comparison of forest cover over a number of years was also made using the Global Forest Watch resource. From this resource, images of Prydonetsk Forestry were taken with conventional designations: areas where new forest plantations are being planted are shown in blue, and areas where cutting is taking place are shown in pink. It is proposed to divide each of the uploaded images of the selected forestry into squares, and then analyze the data for each square. The pink color saturation was calculated and stored in the table. It is noted that forecasting the change in forest stands on the selected site, that is, the change in the percentage of felling, can be done in different ways. First, use regression analysis - apply the regression equation separately to the values of each square, as well as to the entire forestry. Secondly, to form a list of input factors containing indicators on the selected plot in the two previous years and the same indicators on neighboring plots. Thus, the number of factors will be equal to 27: 26 input and 1 output (values on the studied square). Such a forecasting problem can be solved either by the method of multivariate linear regression or by the method of artificial neural networks. The R programming and data analysis language was used to perform calculations using both methods. A script was created that performs calculations by constructing regression lines and an artificial neural network, and also allows determining the best architecture of a neural network and a more effective method of its training for a certain data set. The calculation of the felling dynamics in the entire forestry (the forecast for the last year provides an error of 1 %) and the calculation of the felling dynamics in the selected square (the forecast for the last year provides an error of 3.5 %) are given. After many runs of the script, it was found that the best result is provided by a perceptron with two hidden layers and two neurons in each layer. The results of the calculations indicate a high correlation of the data for determining the percentage of forest that will be cut down in a certain square. Application of this perceptron for forecasting for the last year showed an error of 3 %.